• surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Oh, a “rune”, is it? Those old English were too stupid for “letters”? Sounds like someone’s epoch-ism is on full display.

      • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
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        10 hours ago

        The preceding Runic thorn was ᚦ. While similar to the Latin character Þ/þ, it makes sense to classify one as a rune (since it fits with other runes, which all have constant height) and the other as a letter (since they exist as uppercase and lowercase).

        Similarly, the characters 칭 or 🐝 are not letters but a Hangul syllable and emoji, respectively.

        • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          Interesting! I always thought a letter was a thing that mapped to a sound. So obviously not Chinese characters. But the thorn as the th sound would qualify.

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        This glyph is so old, it comes from the times the Angles and Saxons actually used runes. The thorn was more edgy back then, too. Just think about why it is called thorn.

        Its nice round belly is just a modern interpretation.